
















Class 

Book_ 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 




















W»Asu,' 

GOLD 


COMPILED BY WORKERS OF THE 
WRITERS’ PROGRAM OF THE WORK 
PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION IN THE 
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA 


JUNIOR PRESS BOOKS 

ALBERfXWHITMAN 

& 4*co 

CHICAGO 1940 



PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION 
State-wide Sponsor of the 
Pennsylvania Writers’ Project 

FEDERAL WORKS AGENCY 
John M. Carmody, Administrator 

WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION 
F. C. Harrington, Commissioner 
Florence Kerr, Assistant Commissioner 
Philip Mathews, State Administrator 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 


Co-sponsored and copyrighted, 1940, by Division of Extension Education 
Board of Public Education, Philadelphia 

RECEIVED 

NOV - 1 1940 

COPYRIGHT OFFIfiE 


FOREWORD 


Gold is the fourteenth of thirty booklets in 
the Elementary Science Series. It was prepared 
by the Philadelphia Unit of the Pennsylvania 
Writers' Project, sponsored by the Pennsyl¬ 
vania Department of Public Instruction. 

This booklet, written by Mark Bartman, was 
edited by Katharine Britton of the Editorial 
office. 

Acknowledgment is made to Samuel G. 
Gordon, Associate Curator of the Department 
of Mineralogy, the Academy of Natural Sci¬ 
ences of Philadelphia, for acting as consultant 
to assure accuracy of the text and illustrations. 

Illustrations were prepared by David Cain 
and Herbert Palmer of the Pennsylvania Art 
Project, under the direction of Michael 
Gallagher. 

C. C. Lesley 

State Supervisor 



FOR MANY HUNDREDS OF YEARS WISE MEN WORKED IN SECRET 
TO FIND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE THAT WOULD TURN OTHER 

METALS INTO GOLD. 












GOLD 


Everyone knows that gold is just a 
metal. But how different it seems from 
other metals, such as iron, or tin, or cop¬ 
per. Just whispering the word under the 
breath — "GoZd” — is enough to fill the 
mind with strange and exciting pictures. 
Tales of the hardships of men who looked 
for gold, and the joy of those who found 
it, come rushing back from memory. 

Men have left their homes and ad¬ 
ventured in far places to search for gold. 
They have robbed and cheated and killed 
for gold. They have gone to battle for 
the shiny yellow metal. They have lost 
their lives for it. 

Why do men follow the gleam of gold 
into hardships and dangers that drain 
their strength and try their courage? 

5 


Why are they willing and eager to risk 
their lives and their honor to gain it? 
Because gold will make them rich, we 
say. But why does a bag of gold make 
a man rich when the same amount of 
iron does not? 

The reason is simple. Since the bright 
yellow metal was first discovered, men 
have loved to look at it and longed to 
own it. Because it was so desired and 
so hard to get, its value became great. 
One man would give another man a 
great deal of food or clothing just to get 
his hands on a little of that beautiful 
bright yellow stuff. 

DISCOVERY OF GOLD 

Gold was probably the first metal used 
by men. Perhaps some other duller 
metals were discovered in rocks just as 
early as gold, but at first men saw no 
purpose in digging for those. A long 
time passed before they found out that 
the duller metals could be made into 
6 


many useful things — into tools and 
weapons and machines. But gold was 
different. Gold did not have to be made 
into useful things. It was sought for its 
beauty alone. 

No one really knows how gold was first 
found, but it is easy to imagine the story. 
Picture a man, dressed only in skins, 
walking home from a day’s hunt for 
food. He passes along the banks of a 
stream. As the sinking sun strikes the 
water and the ground around it, some¬ 
thing bright catches his eye. Excited, 
he bends down and scoops up some of 
the sand. There in his hand are several 
small shining pieces. Surely these 
beautiful yellow things cannot be ordi¬ 
nary stones! Delighted, the man carries 
them home to his people. 

The next day the men of the tribe go 
back to the creek to hunt for more of 
the beautiful stones. They are not so 
lucky as the first man was. There is 
more gold there, but only in bits no 

7 


bigger than grains of sand. With great 
trouble the men pick these yellow grains 
from the river mud. It takes a great 
deal of time to get just a little gold, and 
so even a little of it is a great prize. 
Soon gold is more valued by all the 
members of the tribe than any other 
material. 

In some such way, no doubt, men first 
stumbled upon gold thousands of years 
ago, just as white men did much later in 
America. Of course, gold was not found 
only by one man. It was discovered in 
many parts of the world at different 
times. 


EARLY USE 

For long ages gold was used simply as 
ornaments. People used to tie a number 
of small pieces of it together with animal 
skin to make a chain. Then they hung 
the chain around their necks or wrists 
or ankles. They were very simple 
people, these men who lived so long ago. 


They had not yet found out how many 
things could be done with their gold. 

And then at last men began to dis¬ 
cover, often by accident, some interesting 
facts about gold. They noticed that it 
did not break like stone even if it was 
hit very hard with something heavy. 
It just became a little flatter. It was not 
hard like stone. By hammering, men 
could actually change the shape of a 
piece of gold. 

After another long time, men found 
out something even more important. 
Gold became softer when it was heated. 
Shaping was much easier when that was 
known. Men could soften a bit of gold 
over a fire, and twist or bend it into a 
ring or a pretty little charm. 

Now men were on the road to a dis¬ 
covery that made it possible to shape 
gold in almost any way they wished. 
Perhaps the discovery was made by 
chance when some men were trying to 
get their gold very hot and very soft to 

9 


shape it easily. Or perhaps they had 
an idea that if the gold was heated 
enough something interesting might 
happen. At any rate, it was found that 
when the gold became very very hot, it 
finally melted as ice melts in the warm 
sun. When the gold cooled off it be¬ 
came hard again. 

Think of the excitement of the men 
who made this discovery! What beauti¬ 
ful things they could have now! They 
learned to make molds of dirt, and into 
these they poured their precious glowing 
melted gold. When the gold cooled, they 
broke away the molds. And there was 
a tiny golden cow, or sheep, or whatever 
shape they had planned. 

There were other ways, too, in which 
melted gold was used. Articles of stone 
were dipped in it to give them a shining 
yellow coating, or sheath. Sometimes 
while the gold sheath was still hot and 
soft, designs and pictures were cut into it. 

Stone knives made in this way were 
10 


dug up just a few years ago from the 
earth where they were buried a long 
time ago. The gold coverings of these 



PEOPLE LEARNED TO MELT GOLD AND MOLD IT INTO MANY 
SHAPES, SUCH AS THIS LITTLE GOLDEN GODDESS OF JAVA. 


knives are ornamented with figures of 
women, animals, snakes, boats, and many 
other things. Men who have studied 

11 


THIS EGYPTIAN PICTURE WRITING SHOWS A MAN WEIGHING 

GOLD. 


them carefully say that they may be 
fifteen thousand years old. 

Perhaps even as early as that gold 
was known in many parts of the world. 
We do not know. We can only piece 
together the story of early times from 









things found in the earth, and from the 
few records that remain today. 

The Egyptians, for instance, who were 
the first people to write, began by cut¬ 
ting pictures of their doings on rock. 
Some of these rocks, carved almost 
six thousand years ago, have pictures of 
gold mining. Many of the gold orna¬ 
ments found in Egypt are even older 
than that, and others are not quite so 
old. 

From the Bible we learn that the Jews 
also used gold long before Christ was 
born. They had even learned to beat it 
into thin plates and cut it into wires. 

KING MIDAS 

By the tune men began to write history, 
gold was of great value in a large part 
of the Old World. So it is not surprising 
that many of the stories told by people 
of those times were about the search for 
gold, or the desire for gold. 

Probably the most famous of all is the 

13 


tale of King Midas, who ruled a country 
in far away Asia Minor more than 
twenty-five hundred years ago. It is said 
that Midas befriended Silenus, the teach¬ 
er of Bacchus, god of wine. So one night 
while Midas slept, Bacchus appeared 
before him. 

"Hear me, Midas,” said Bacchus to 
the frightened king. "You have done 
good to someone whom I love. Now I 
shall return the good. Only let me know 
your wish, and it shall be granted.” 

Midas saw that riches beyond his 
dreams were his for the asking. Should 
he wish for a room full of gold? Fifty 
rooms full of gold? No, he could do 
much better than that. He could wish 
that everything he touched would turn 
to gold. Then his riches would never 
end. 

When Midas told Bacchus his choice, 
the god of wine gave him a chance to 
change his mind. But Midas insisted, 
and so the wish was granted. 

14 


When Midas awoke, the clothes he 
wore and the bed he slept in were all of 
gold. At first he was very happy. Ex¬ 
citedly he touched the flowers in his 
room, the chairs, the tables. All turned 
to gold. He would be the richest man 
in the world. In a glad voice he called 
for his breakfast. But when he raised 
the food to his mouth to eat, his happi¬ 
ness fled. Even his food had turned to 
gold! Fearfully he seized a cup of wine, 
and that too turned to gold. 

Then Midas saw that gold could be a 
curse. In a loud voice he called upon 
Bacchus, begging him to return and take 
away the evil gift. Bacchus answered 
the prayer. He told Midas to go and 
bathe in the Pactolus River and he would 
be all right again. Ever after, the story 
says, the Pactolus River had sands of 
gold. And even to this day, if a person 
is always successful in business, we say 
that he has the Midas touch. 


15 


ALCHEMY 

But while the desire for gold could be 
a curse, that did not stop men from look¬ 
ing for it. And in some ways this search 
had good results. Though it did not 
always lead to the discovery of the pre- 



THIS GOLDEN BUCKLE WAS MADE IN ENGLAND MORE THAN 
THIRTEEN HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 


cious metal, it did lead to the discovery 
of new ideas and new lands. 

For instance, our science of chemistry, 
the study of what substances are made 
of and how they act, grew out of the old 
science of alchemy. And alchemy grew 
out of the desire for gold. 

16 





Alchemy had as one of its chief aims 
the making of gold from other metals. 
Always there are some men in the world 
who dream of easier and faster ways of 
doing things. Men of this sort said to 
themselves, "Suppose we didn’t have to 
dig in the ground for gold, or sift it from 
river sands? Suppose, indeed, we could 
actually make gold!” And they set 
about trying to do just that. If they 
could learn the secret of making gold, 
they would hold in their hands the very 
secret of nature itself, and its way of 
creating things. 

These old alchemists had a very 
strange idea about how the less precious, 
or imperfect metals, as they called them, 
could be changed into the perfect gold, 
the King of Metals. They thought there 
was a substance called the Philosopher’s 
Stone. The Philosopher’s Stone was 
present in everything, they believed. 
They had only to find a way to get it 
out of things. With this powerful aid, 


gold could be made even from lead. Not 
only that, the Philosopher’s Stone would 
cure sickness, and it would bring eternal 
life. 

So for many hundreds of years wise 
men of each age searched for the Philoso¬ 
pher’s Stone. Most of their work was 
done in secret, for no one wanted to share 
with another person any discovery he 
might make. Of course, the alchemists 
did not find the Stone, for there was no 
such thing. 

But their work was not entirely wasted. 
Though they did not learn how to make 
gold, they learned a number of other 
things. They learned how to make 
medicines. They learned what hap¬ 
pened to different materials when they 
were heated. They learned that if cer¬ 
tain things were mixed together, some¬ 
times strange changes took place in them. 
Most important, they found new ways of 
studying materials. And many of their 
discoveries and their methods of working 
18 


were finally used to build the science of 
chemistry. That was just one way in 
which the desire for gold helped men to 
learn more about the world in which 
they lived. 

Chemistry taught men that the Phi¬ 
losopher’s Stone was just an idle dream, 
and the practice of alchemy died out. 
But a few years ago chemists began again 
to work on the idea of changing one 
metal into another. They have suc¬ 
ceeded in doing this in some cases, though 
they have not yet made gold except in 
very tiny amounts. The difficulty of 
making one metal from another is still 
so great that it does not have any value 
for ordinary people. But as chemists 
learn more and more, perhaps some day 
they will be able to change metals just 
as they wish. 

THE SEARCH IN THE NEW WORLD 

Just about the time that men were 
beginning to believe there was no Phi- 

19 


losopher’s Stone to be found, they began 
to make a different kind of search for 
gold. That was more than four hundred 
years ago, soon after America was dis¬ 
covered by the men of Europe. Already 
the explorers were carrying back across 
the Atlantic Ocean strange tales of the 
New World, told by the Indians. The 
tales excited the spirit and the desire of 
those who heard them. There was gold 
to be had in this new land, gold for those 
who were brave enough to fight for it. 
So many men got ships and sailed away 
in search of it. Some of them died, but 
some of them did return with riches 
beyond their dreams. 

One of the Indian tales spoke of a rich 
land in Central America, where there 
was a temple lined with gold. So party 
after party of adventurers set out to 
find it. There was a river by which the 
land could be reached. Up this river 
brave Balboa, the Spaniard who dis¬ 
covered the Pacific Ocean, led 160 men. 
20 


But they were turned back after fierce 
fighting with the Indians, as many other 
search parties were later. 

Even the river did not seem willing 
to let strangers pass. If the Indians did 
not defeat them, the river barred their 
way by floods. The Spaniards grew 
fearful. The native gods must be pro¬ 
tecting their temple of gold from thieves. 
But at last two parties of explorers did 
reach the goal. They found no golden 
temple, but they did find enough gold to 
make them rich. 

Probably the land that drew most 
adventurers was El Dorado, the home of 
the Golden Man. So famous was it that 
it came to mean any land-of-dreams-come- 
true. But at first there was only El 
Dorado, and that was in South America. 
So much gold was there, the Indians 
said, that in a great festival every year 
the chief of the tribe was carried in a 
barrow of solid gold. And that wasn’t 
all. His naked body was covered with 



THE CHIEF LEAPED INTO THE RIVER, WASHING OFF THE GOLD 
AS AN OFFERING TO THE GODS. 








sticky gums and rolled in gold dust. 
Then the chief leaped into a certain 
river, washing off the gold as an offering 
to the gods, while his people on the 
shore threw more gold and many jewels 
into the water. 

Hundreds of men searched for El 
Dorado but did not find it. At last one 
party reached the promised land, after 
many hardships, only to be disappointed. 
The great festival had not been held for 
many, many years, and the Indians had 
hidden most of their gold. 

Many of the lands about which the 
Indians told were never found. But one 
was found, and it gave more wealth than 
had been dreamed of. This was the old, 
old city of Cuzco in Peru, home of the 
Inca Indians. Here was the Temple of 
the Sun, supposed to have been built 
hundreds of years before by the child of 
the sun-god in whom the Incas believed. 

In the main hall of the Temple was a 
solid gold statue of the sun-god. The 

23 


door posts were made of gold, and the 
walls were covered with round golden 
plates. A door of silver led into the 
hall of the moon goddess, the wife of the 
sun-god. Here all decorations were of 
silver and other white metal. 

It was the Spaniard Pizarro and his 
men who found Cuzco and captured the 
Inca chief, Atahualpa. Atahualpa told 
the Spaniards that if he were freed, he 
would fill a huge room with gold for them 
and fill it twice with silver. Pizarro 
promised him his freedom. But when 
the tribe had collected the metal, Pizarro 
killed the chief. 

It is said that the Incas were bringing 
a great golden chain to add to their 
chiefs ransom when they heard of his 
death. They threw the chain into a 
river, and men have been looking for it 
ever since. But Pizarro did not need 
the chain. From the ransom already 
given him by the trusting Incas he got 
more than eight million dollars in gold, 

24 



WHEN THE INCAS HEARD OF THEIR CHIEF’S DEATH, THEY 
THREW THE GREAT GOLDEN CHAIN INTO THE RIVER. 







and about one and one-half million in 
silver. Each of his soldiers, besides gold 
and silver, got 200 slaves. 

Like alchemy, this search in the new 
world had some value even when no 
wealth was found. Both North and 
South America might have waited a 
much longer time to be explored and 
settled if men had not been led always 
into new places by the desire for gold. 


GREAT GOLD DISCOVERIES 

If all the gold found by the early ex¬ 
plorers were gathered together, the 
amount would be small compared with 
that of a find made in the Far West in 
1848. 

In central California stood the saw¬ 
mill of John Sutter, who owned a great 
deal of land in that area. One day a 
worker in Sutter’s Mill was cleaning the 
trough through which the water ran from 
the mill back to the stream of a creek. 
26 


He saw a glittering speck lying in the 
bottom of the trough. 

It was gold. 

Then the creek was searched, and the 



IN CENTRAL CALIFORNIA STOOD THE SAWMILL OF JOHN SUTTER. 


land on both sides of it. Both were rich 
in gold. There was gold in California! 
The search for more began. 

Like fire the news spread, over the 
Rockies, across the continent, down into 
Mexico and South America, across the 
ocean. 


27 








From all over the world gold hunters, 
called prospectors, hurried to the Cali¬ 
fornia gold fields. Some had to come 
by boat around the southern tip of South 
America. Some came across the conti- 



AN INDIAN LIES IN WAIT AS A TRAIN OF COVERED WAGONS 
WINDS ALONG THE TRAIL TO CALIFORNIA AND GOLD. 


nent by covered wagon, by horse, by 
mule, by cart. Some trudged across the 
desert, step by step, on foot. Many were 
killed by cold or by the desert’s heat, or 
by Indians. 

The great gold rush had begun. In 


28 



1850 California produced as much gold 
as the entire world had produced in any 
one of the ten years before that. 

But John Sutter shared in none of 
this wealth. The prospectors overran his 
farm, killed his cattle, took his land from 
him. And while California grew rich, 
John Sutter came back to the East, a 
poor and weary old man. 

In 1850 gold was found in Australia, 
and new discoveries were made in Russia. 
And then, in 1859, a great discovery was 
made again in America, in Nevada. 
This gold field was like an underground 
river of gold flowing through rock for 
four miles. The vein of gold, called 
the Comstock lode, was more than half 
a mile wide in the central part. During 
the next sixty years, over 470 million 
dollars’ worth of gold was taken from 
this lode. 

The most important gold discovery of 
all time was made in 1884 in South Africa. 
The field is very large, and since 1913 it 

29 


has been producing nearly half of the 
world’s yearly gold supply. 

Those are only a few of the gold dis¬ 
coveries made during the last half of 
the nineteenth century in different parts 
of the world. And always excited gold 
rushes followed the discoveries, and 
people moved by thousands to the places 
where they hoped to find riches enough 
to live a life of ease. 

PROSPECTING 

When a prospector joined the gold rush 
to California, or Australia, or Alaska, 
he knew only that some gold had been 
found in those places. He hoped there 
would be more, but he had no way of 
knowing where to find it. He had to 
wander from place to place in search of 
his El Dorado. Often he had only a 
pickax, a shovel, a pan, a mule and 
some food. Sometimes he spent years 
and years looking for a "strike,” for a 
lucky finding of gold. 

30 


Most of those who searched found 
nothing but hardships. They were poor 
all their lives, living only on "grub¬ 
stakes,” that is, loans, and the hope that 
somewhere, someday, they might find 
gold. 

When a man made a strike, he filed 
a claim. 

That means he sent the government a 
paper saying that he wanted this piece 
of land and had a right to it because it 
belonged to no one else. He marked the 
land with stones, or sticks driven into 
the ground, and claimed the land as his 
own. Then he went about gathering 
pieces of rock or sand that contained 
gold. These he sent to a man who tested 
them to find out how much gold there 
was in each sample. 

Sometimes the report on the samples 
showed that there was enough gold to 
make it worth while to dig out the rock 
or sand and take from it the hidden 
gold. Then the prospector began to work 

31 


his claim. Often the report said that 
there was very little gold in the rock. 
Then the prospector returned to his 
weary search. 

Sometimes confidence men — that is, 
cheats — fooled someone into buying a 
piece of land for a great deal of money 
by telling him there was a lot of gold 
in it. One of their tricks was to mix a 
little gold with the powder from a shot¬ 
gun and shoot the gold and powder 
against a rock. Of course, a test of that 
rock showed a large amount of gold. 
The man who was being cheated thought 
that all the land had that much gold. 
So he bought the land. Then the con¬ 
fidence man disappeared, and the buyer 
had only a few acres of land, which 
perhaps could not even be farmed. 

There was one way in which nature 
itself fooled the prospectors. Sometimes 
a man came upon a kind of mineral that 
was yellow and gleaming, just like gold. 
But a test showed that it was actually 

32 


iron pyrites, a material that had very 
little value. Many a prospector was 
fooled by this into thinking he had made 
a strike. And so iron pyrites came to 
be called fool’s gold. 

PLACER MINING 

Gold found in the sand and gravel of 
streams is easy to mine. Nature already 
has done most of the work. Wind and 
water and air have worn the gold from 
the rock where it once lay, and carried it 
into the streams. There it sinks to the 
bottom, because it is twenty times as 
heavy as the water. 

This surface gold may be in tiny grains, 
smaller even than grains of sand. But 
sometimes the pieces are as large as 
pebbles, or even larger. These are called 
nuggets. The largest nugget ever found 
weighed 183 pounds, as much as a full- 
grown man. That was important enough 
to deserve a name, and so it was called 
the Welcome Stranger. 


33 



gold, into a pan. Then he shakes the 
pan, and stirs up the sand and water. 
The heavier gold sinks to the bottom. 
Some of the sand and water are tossed 
out of the pan. Then the miner scoops 

34 


Usually river gold is pure, though 
sometimes it is mixed with silver. The 
miner only has to wash it from the sand. 
He scoops some water, with sand and 


THIS IS A GOLD ROCKER, A SIMPLE MACHINE TO TAKE THE 
PLACE OF THE PAN IN PLACER MINING. 



up more water, shakes the pan again, 
and more sand and water fly out. At 
last all the sand and water are gone. 
All the gold that was in the sand lies in 
gleaming specks at the bottom of the 
pan. This is called panning, or placer 
mining. 

All placer mining used to be done by 
hand with a simple iron pan. Today 
machinery is used. Great beds of gravel 
are washed away quickly by powerful 
streams of water from a large hose some¬ 
what like those used by fire companies. 
This large hose shoots out water with 
such great force that it could kill a man 
as far as two hundred feet away. 

GETTING GOLD FROM ORE 

Placer mining was the only kind of 
mining known to people of long ago. 
They took only the gold that they could 
find lying right on the ground before 
their eyes. But most gold is buried in 
rocks underground. Men had to learn 

35 


to mine this gold ore just as they did 
coal, or iron, or copper ore. This is 
called lode mining. 

In lode mining, tunnels are dug into 



THIS IS THE OUTSIDE OF A LARGE GOLD MINE IN SOUTH AFRICA. 


the earth. Sometimes these tunnels ex¬ 
tend more than a mile underground. Into 
the darkness the miners go, with little 
lights on their caps, and with picks and 
shovels. 

First the rock must be broken from 
the sides of the tunnel. Today some of 

36 





THE MINER SCOOPS SOME WATER, WITH SAND AND GOLD, INTO 

A PAN. 





this digging is done by machinery. As 
more and more gold ore is dug out, the 
tunnels grow longer and branch out in 
different directions, like underground 
streets following the lode of gold. The 



THE GOLD ORE IS BROKEN FROM THE SIDES OF THE TUNNEL 
BY A MACHINE CALLED A DRILL. 


gold ore is brought up from the mine, 
either in wheelbarrows or in small cars. 

Now the problem is to get the gold out 
of the rock. First the ore is crushed to 
a powder by a stamping machine that 
acts much like a man crushing a nut 
with his heel. Then the powdered ore 
is passed over copper plates covered with 

38 




A MINER BRINGS GOLD ORE UP FROM THE MINE IN A WHEEL¬ 
BARROW. 



mercury. Mercury is the silver-like 
liquid metal that is used in many ther¬ 
mometers. The mercury on the copper 
plates attracts the gold passing over it 
in somewhat the same way that a magnet 
attracts bits of iron or steel. The gold 
sticks to the mercury and mixes with it. 
The powdered rock simply passes on. 
The mixed gold and mercury, called amal¬ 
gam, form a soft mass. 

Some of the mercury is then squeezed 
out of the amalgam, and the amalgam 
becomes much harder. Now comes the 
last step. The amalgam is boiled. As 
it boils, the mercury evaporates, just as 
water does when it is boiled. But the 
gold remains just as it is. At last all 
the mercury has evaporated, and nothing 
but gold is left. 


ALLOYS 

Gold has one quality that keeps it 
from being generally used alone. It is 
soft. A coin, or a ring, or a pin made of 

40 


pure gold would soon bend out of shape. 
So other metals are usually mixed with 
gold to make it harder. These mixtures 
are called alloys. 

One of the oldest alloys is gold and 
silver. This mixture was used for coins 
more than 2,600 years ago in Europe. 
Silver does not harden the gold much, 
but it does change its color. When one- 
quarter silver is used with three-quarters 
gold, the alloy is green. Green gold is 
sometimes used for jewelry. As more 
silver is added, the gold alloy slowly 
turns silvery. This white gold has many 
uses too — for jewelry, for rims of glasses, 
for rings. 

Copper mixed with gold makes a good 
hard alloy that will remain in any shape 
desired. Copper also gives the gold a 
reddish yellow color that is very pretty. 
Probably the most usual alloy is one of 
gold, silver, and copper. This is hard 
enough for general use, and it keeps the 
bright yellow gold color. 


41 


The ordinary alloy is made by melting 
the metals and stirring them together. 
But there is a gold mixture that is made 
in a different way. Thin sheets of gold 
are placed upon plates made of some 
alloy. Then the gold and alloy are rolled 
together until they are firmly fixed. This 
rolled gold is often used in making 
watches. 

It is easy to tell how pure any gold 
article is. Somewhere on every watch, 
or ring, or any piece of gold, there are 
several figures. They read, "10K,” or 
"18K,” or any other number between 
1 and 24. The K stands for carats. For 
the purity of gold is measured in carats. 
One carat is -h of all the gold in the 
article. So if the article is twenty-four 
carats, it is pure gold. If it is marked 
18 carats, it has eighteen parts of gold 
for six parts of some other metal. 
Articles made of fourteen or eighteen 
carat gold are called solid, however. 
That simply means that they are not 

42 


just plated with gold, but are gold right 
through. 

GOLD LEAF 

There are some things that can be 
done with gold that cannot be done with 
most other metals. It can be hammered 
out into a sheet of amazing thinness. 
And it can be drawn out to a thread finer 
than a spider’s web without breaking. 
One ounce of gold, for instance, could be 
drawn into a wire 900 miles long! It 
can be hammered into sheets so thin that 
if 367,000 sheets were placed one upon 
the other, they would make a pile only 
one inch thick! 

In making these thin sheets of gold, 
called gold leaf, an alloy of copper or 
silver is first made to get the color de¬ 
sired. Then this gold alloy is molded 
into a bar. The bar is placed between 
rollers like those on the wringer of a 
washing machine. The rollers flatten it 
into a ribbon ■giro of an inch thick. 


43 


That is just the beginning. Next, the 
ribbon is cut into pieces, each an inch 
square. These pieces are placed between 
sheets of very thin tough paper. First 
paper, then gold, then paper — until each 
pile contains 210 leaves of gold. Then 
the pile is wrapped in parchment, a 
paper-like material made from sheep skin. 

The small package is placed on a 
marble block. For twenty minutes it is 
beaten with a hammer weighing sixteen 
pounds. When the beating stops, the 
sheets of gold have spread out till each 
is three and one-half inches square. 

Each square is cut into quarters, and 
the little squares are placed between 
layers of ox skin. For two more hours 
the gold is beaten, this time with a ten- 
pound hammer. And again the gold 
sheets are taken out, and each is cut 
into four squares. Then back they go 
between the layers of ox skin, to be 
beaten for four more hours with a seven- 
pound hammer. 

44 


By this time the gold sheets are so 
thin that 200,000 of them would make 
a pile an inch thick. They can be made 
thinner if necessary, but they are gold 
leaf now. Each is so thin that the light 
can shine through it! 

It may seem that this gold leaf is so 
thin that it could not be handled without 
breaking. But it has many uses. Most 
of the gold lettering on store windows 
and office doors is gold leaf. The letter¬ 
ing on book covers, the gilding on picture 
frames, on pottery, on china or an any¬ 
thing else which needs gilding is done in 
gold leaf. It is not very expensive to 
use gold in this way, because the leaf 
is so thin that it takes only a tiny bit of 
gold for each letter or design. 

MONEY 

There is another important quality 
that gold has over most other metals. 
It will last for a very long time without 
changing in any way. It does not rust 

45 


like iron or tarnish like silver. A piece 
of gold could be buried in the ground 
for a hundred years, and when it was 
dug up it would not be changed. 

This special quality makes gold good 
for such things as fillings for teeth. A 
filling made of gold will last a life time. 
But there is a much more important use 
for gold because of its lasting quality. 
It makes a good money. The same coin 
can be used for many, many years. 

There are other things that help to 
make gold a good money. Just a small 
amount of it is worth a great deal. So 
it can be more easily handled than other 
less valuable metals. Also, everyone 
knows what it looks like, and so people 
cannot be easily fooled into taking false 
gold coins for real ones. 

Gold has been used for money for 
several thousand years. Until recent 
times it was the chief money of most 
countries in the world. Even before 
people had learned to make it into coins, 

46 



HERE. MANY YEARS AGO, A PROSPECTOR STAKED HIS CLAIM, 
HOPING TO FIND IN THE GROUND GREAT RICHES. 


tney used gold dust or pieces of gold to 
trade. 

But today most countries have very 
little money gold. About three-quarters 
of all the money gold in the world is in 
the United States. On July 1, 1940 our 
Government had about twenty billion 
dollars’ worth of the precious metal. But 
no coins were being made from it. In¬ 
stead, tons of the shining yellow metal 
were buried by the Government in special 
safes, or vaults, under Fort Knox, Ken- 

47 



tucky. As more gold is brought here, 
that is buried with the rest. How long 
the gold will stay buried, or for what 
purpose it will be used, nobody knows. 
It is the greatest buried treasure in all 
history. 


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